Party of God knows what: will Hezbollah remain a movement devoted to war with Israel or a pragmatic political player in Lebanon? That choice could determine the future of the Middle East.

• Author: Hammer, Joshua
• Position: Warriors of God: The Inside Story of Hezbollah's Relentless War Against Israel - Book review

Warriors of God: The Inside Story of Hezbollah's Relentless War Against Israel

by Nicholas Blanford

Random House, 544 pp.

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Two days after the last Israeli soldier had withdrawn from southern Lebanon in July 2000, Hezbollah--the highly disciplined guerrilla army that had carried out a two-decade war of attrition against the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF)--held a celebration in the southern Lebanese village of Bint Jbeil. One hundred thousand people descended on the border hamlet to hear Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah's charismatic leader, deliver a victory speech. Nasrallah's Shiite warriors had just accomplished the unthinkable, driving out one of the world's best-equipped armies with little more than martyrs' zeal, hit-and-run tactics, and an arsenal of M16s and rocket-propelled grenades. But Nasrallah, who has staked Hezbollah's existence on a permanent state of conflict, vowed that the war against Israel was not over. Directing his speech as much to the seething population across the border in the West Bank and Gaza as to the Lebanese, he declared, "You do not need tanks, strategic balance, rockets, or cannons to liberate your land; all you need are the martyrs who shook and struck fear into this angry Zionist entity.... The choice is yours."

Two months later, the Al Aqsa intifada broke out in the occupied territories, unleashing four years of tit-for-tat carnage that killed an estimated 5,500 Israelis and Palestinians and hardened attitudes on both sides of the Middle East conflict. It was just one measure of the powerful--and, in the eyes of many, malign--influence and reach of Hezbollah, a point meticulously and persuasively documented in Warriors of God: The Inside Story of Hezbollah 's Relentless War Against Israel, by Nicholas Blanford, the Beirut-based correspondent for the Christian Science Monitor and the London Times as well as the author of Killing Mr. Lebanon: The Assassination of Rafik Hariri and Its Impact on the Middle East. A resident of Lebanon since 1994, Blanford has observed Nasrallah's Islamic warriors up close for nearly two decades. He's broken bread with operatives in southern Lebanese villages and in Beirut's Shiite suburbs, interviewed the elusive Nasrallah, talked to Israeli commanders who waged war against Hezbollah, and come close to being blown apart by rocket fire during Israel's bloody offensives in 1996 and 2006. Blanford has gone farther than just about any other Western...